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Monday, January 19, 2015

Freelance at Elance.com: How You Too Can Make Mo' Money

This month I created an account on Elance. I'm kicking myself now for not having done this sooner. I guess I just didn't consider freelance writing as a worthwhile side hustle. Mistake!What prompted me to check out Elance was reading an article on one of J. Money's blogs. You ever hear of J. Money? He's a financial blogger at Budgets Are Sexy and sticks his hair up in a mohawk. He accepted the Mexican slang nickname, J. Feria, I gave him over email this past week. Meaning he's not only a friendly person for communicating with me, but also now an honorary Mexican. Ha! You should check out his sites.Back to Elance. The process of setting up your own account is not that hard. Like most sites, you create a profile first. Most people will use their name for their Freelance company. I used "Common Core Money," of course. Below that comes your tagline. For example, you can write, "Blogger," or "Article Writer," or "Coding," or "Software Developer," whatever it is that defines you and your skill set.

Side HustleAfter entering where you live and other information, you get to provide an Overview of your freelance services. I recommend you really work hard on crafting a strong and concise paragraph about who you are, what you represent, and what you can offer potential Clients. Don't get too specific about your services here. You should leave that for the Service Description portion of your profile. When you're adding skills, make sure you thoroughly give each sector a good look. You want to have added as many skills as you can, i.e., that you actually possess. Remember, you'll get job postings emailed to you by Elance each day based on these skills.Not to belabor writing about the Elance profile process, I'll now move on to my first successful proposal. So I submitted a proposal for this job I thought was perfect for my Creative Writing skill set. The job was posted on January 12th. The title of the job was, "Regarding Poverty." It caught my eye. I was like…shoot, I can tell you all about poverty. I read the description of the job to be sure I was a match. I took the liberty of copying and pasting it below so you can see it for yourself.

We are looking for well-written, personal accounts from those who want to share their experiences on what it is like having lived in poverty and/or overcome it and how being poor has affected them.

In this country, poverty has a great social stigma. So, we would like to create a compilation that deals with this topic and helps inspire other in similar situations to keep their chins up. Our goal is to inspire others to keep fighting to achieve whatever dream they seek.

Criteria:1. must be true, personal stories, not published elsewhere2. should be at least 500 words in length (or more)3. should also be overall positive in nature 4. should include a blurb about yourself as the author (at the end)

Any story you write for us, you can still receive author credit for (if you elect to) but the story you submit will become our property upon submission (thus, you cannot reprint it without our written permission first and the sole compensation for this project will be what is pre-negotiated).

If this is something you would be interested in being part of, please do include a short writing sample & describe what you'd like to write about. We are looking to pay $20 per story (for this project) and will hire multiple authors. Our preferred story would have emotional impact and be easy to read, not read like a bio….

If you feel worthy of the job, you then submit a proposal. I made sure to hit on the things that fit the Client's criteria. Wouldn't you know it…I got the gig three days later. I finished the job on the 17th and got paid on the 19th. I was also given my first feedback and it was outstanding! See for yourself below:

Added Benefits
I spent about an hour and fifteen minutes writing and editing my piece. I was paid $20 for it. You may think this is not much for the effort but sometimes there are collateral benefits to Elance jobs. This is the email I received from the Client that paid me:

Wow! That was excellent. Your story is very well written and even humorous, too.I loved it. This will be perfect for our collection. We're so lucky to have found you! Thanks again so much for having written this piece for us.

Thanks so much for your email contact! Ours is ReadingHarborCo@gmail.comWe also have a website: www.readingharbor.com.

To answer your questions, we are going to post it as part of a book compilation on both trade paperback as well as ebook (kindle) version. We may try to release it in other formats but those are our intended platforms right now. It will be through Amazon & Barnes and Nobles online. We can keep you posted when it comes out.

That would be great if you could/ would share it with your network contacts.We are really excited about this project and are trying to collect more quality stories like this to share with the world. :)

Thanks again so much!Grace

www.readingharbor.com
Notice where my piece will be showcased? In a book! That adds to my ongoing published works resume. And I made a contact as well. $20 could turn into more in the future from this one job.Should You Do Elance?
That's a no brainer. Even if you live comfortably on your work salary, you should consider creating an Elance profile and bidding on qualified jobs. You can use the extra cash for investing and accelerate your wealth creation. Freelancing should be everyone's side hustle in this day and age. Why? Because there's less money out there to be had. Really! If you haven't heard, the richest one percent's share of global wealth increased to 48%. By 2016 this elite minority will own over half of all the world's wealth. See: global-income-inequality-richest-1-to-own-half-of-worlds-wealth-by-2016/. What are they going to do when they own it all? Build country clubs on the moon and leave a polluted, dying, planet Earth for the poor? Elon Musk will have CAT build this wealthy segment contained space bubble cities with artificial gravity, temperature regulators, the works...and make giant swimming pools out of craters. Hey…one never knows!

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